Community Champion Organization
Personal Finance Expert Get A Financial Life NYC
Jonathan Wroble and his financial education initiative, Get A Financial Life NYC, are stepping up their commitment to helping young New Yorkers build real-world money skills. Through a strengthened partnership with the New York Financial Educators Council, GFL NYC is deepening its role as a driving force in the financial wellness movement – working to expand economic opportunity and spark meaningful change in neighborhoods across the city and state.
Get A Financial Life NYC continues to champion individuals and organizations striving to reach their financial goals. Under Jonathan Wroble’s leadership, the initiative brings communities together through financial education events designed to elevate financial confidence and capability throughout New York City and beyond.
Jonathan Wroble’s financial wellness work now centers on resilience, clarity, and long-term stability – a reflection of his dedication to nurturing communities that are not only informed, but equipped to thrive in an ever-changing economic landscape.
Company History
When we first set out to create Get A Financial Life NYC (GFL NYC), we started with a simple question: What do New York City’s high school students want to know about money?
Over the span of a year, we asked these questions of more than 250 people across all five boroughs, from educators and principals to nonprofit leaders and journalists. Most importantly, we also asked students.
What we heard was often inspiring, and sometimes surprising. Kids wanted to know about investing, compound interest, and making money on their money. But in the same breath, they brought up crypto and gambling. They often knew about insidious credit card interest rates, but were less cynical about Buy Now, Pay Later offers.
As a result of these conversations, two things became clear. First, given the modern landscape of prediction markets, in-game purchases, loyalty apps, and the myriad other financial technologies hard at work separating kids as young as teenagers from their (or their parents’) money, we needed to focus equally on personal finance “don’ts” as on “dos.”
Second, we needed to give kids lessons they could apply to their real lives. “Budgeting” should reference the daily decision to eat free lunch at school versus buy a sandwich from a deli; “Banking” should teach kids how to open a high-yield savings account on the spot. The objective to deliver “actionable, relevant, and timely information” – a quote from the Financial Literacy and Education Commission’s national strategy – became a top focus.
The result was GFL NYC, the first ever money curriculum created specifically for New York City public high schoolers. Its 10 free lessons are Budgeting, Saving in a Bank, Credit, Debit Cards, Smart Spending, Investing, College & Credentials, Working, Health Insurance, and A Financial Recap. Each lesson features ready-to-use Google Slides, teacher notes, and student worksheets, and the curriculum takes about 10 class periods to teach – making it embeddable in any class with the time to spare. Our sponsor is the Heckscher Foundation for Children, a leading nonprofit that supports data-driven programming in arts and education for NYC kids.
In our first year, GFL NYC was taught in 30 NYC public schools and reached more than 1,500 students. It was adopted both by New York state and the NYC Department of Education as a recommended resource for teaching personal finance. And on a pre- and post-assessment measuring financial literacy aptitude, students exposed to our material improved their scores by more than 50%.
We started with a pilot of 14 high schools across all five boroughs in the ’24-’25 school year, working with one teacher per school. These teachers workshopped our ten GFL NYC lessons with us and taught a test lesson in their classrooms for student feedback.
In the ’25-’26 school year, these 14 pilot teachers taught all 10 lessons in their classrooms. The same year, superintendent Dr. Hoa Tu in Queens noticed our work, and brought the curriculum to 12 of her high schools. In total, the curriculum reached 30 schools and more than 1,500 students in school year ’25-’26. We visited every classroom at least once to see the GFL NYC lessons in action, collecting student feedback along the way.
In March 2026, NY state officially mandated personal finance education for grades K-12, including a requirement to teach it in grades 9-12 starting in the fall of that year. GFL NYC is now recognized both by the NY State Education Department and the NYC Department of Education as a resource for teachers to meet this mandate, and it is fully aligned to the state requirement.
In the ’26-’27 school year, we are expanding to 50 NYC public high schools.
Our continuing goals with GFL NYC are threefold. First, each and every year, we want to reach as many of the 70,000 graduating NYC public school seniors as we can. Second, we want to provide financial literacy to teachers, both to improve their comfort with financial education and to point out their unique benefits as NYC educators. (One of the most common former professions of retired millionaires is teacher!)
Last, we want to bring families and communities into the fray. To that end, one of our initial collaborations featured year-end financial fairs at 12 participating schools in Queens, where GFL NYC students presented what they’d learned to their teachers and family members.
As an advisory board member of the National Financial Educators Council, I also hope to show GFL NYC as a model for how large school systems and cities can create financial education programs tailored to their students and citizens. We all agree that money is crucial to teach, and we also generally agree on what to teach. But context and audience are paramount, too.
Community Service Gratitude for Get A Financial Life NYC
Through the generosity of Jonathan Wroble and Get A Financial Life NYC, the New York Financial Educators Council is advancing its mission to help teens and families across the state build stronger financial foundations. Wroble’s commitment to expanding financial education strengthens both individuals and the organizations that serve them throughout the Empire State. His sponsorship also elevates public understanding of economic empowerment, drawing attention to its urgency and fueling long-term impact through new alliances and community partnerships.
Jonathan Wroble’s financial wellness initiatives are grounded in the principles of responsibility, resilience, accessibility, and lifelong learning – values that shape his approach to supporting financial education and expanding opportunity for New Yorkers of all backgrounds.
